


Mercy

by Misaya



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Angels & Demons, Angel Erwin, Established Levi/Erwin Smith, Established Relationship, Euthanasia, Heavy Angst, Hospitals, I'm Sorry, Inspired By Tumblr, M/M, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Terminal Illnesses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-11
Updated: 2015-10-11
Packaged: 2018-04-25 23:30:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4980928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Misaya/pseuds/Misaya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Men are not immortal, and angels are not God.</p><p>Angel!Erwin x Human!Levi</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mercy

**Author's Note:**

> Originally was a Destiel anon req from Tumblr: "One of them gets diagnosed with a terminal illness"
> 
> It came out as eruri characterization anyway since that's all I write, so sorry :"D

_And how funny it is_ , Erwin thinks to himself as he sits in the mint green waiting room in the doctor’s office,  _that suddenly he’s been rendered powerless and just as vulnerable to mortality as anyone else_. His hands shake, fingers clasped around the knobby ridges of his knees. Waiting has never been so hard, not even those infinitesimal moments in between the time Levi had run shaking fingers over the ridges of Erwin's back, knobby wings and scarred skin, and the time Levi had finally said that it wasn't anything he couldn't handle.

It had started with a quiver in Levi's fingers, black coffee sloshing out of cheap china mugs because he couldn’t hold his hands steady enough to bring it to his mouth. It had started with headaches, pain radiating like wildfire through Levi's thoughts and shading his words with irritation. It had started when Erwin wasn’t watching, and he thinks vaguely to himself that this is the worst punishment yet.

“Wait here,” Levi had commanded, his voice shaky, minutes and hours and years ago while he’d been led away into the corridors of the hospital. “I’m sure it’s probably nothing, but I know you, always blowing things out of proportion.” His smile had been stunted and strained, mirrored masks of frozen consolation staring infinite into each other, and Erwin had only managed to convince himself that it would be alright because he willed it to be so.

He flips through magazines and burns through cups of barely chilled water from the cooler in the corner, crumpling his way through the Styrofoam and worrying around the fragile rims with his mouth so that semicircles of crescents embed their way into the material. He reads without understanding, hears without listening, sees without believing, and wonders for the first time if this is what it’s like to doubt and to disbelieve.

When Levi shakes his way back out into the world of the living, Erwin's the first to greet him, the first to take him by the elbow and ask him if he’s feeling alright, what the doctor’s said, what he can do to help.

“They said we have to wait,” Levi replies, numb lips and even number expression. No news is good news, right? Erwin rationalizes to himself as he leads Levi out into the parking lot, as he bundles Levi into the car and slots the key into the ignition slot like he’s watched Levi do so many times before.

He steps into his shoes, filling the weight of their world with water, and prays that Levi will float. Humans always do.

The next time they step into the hospital, Erwin can’t help but notice that they’re directed into another ward, one that smells of sickness and despair and the bright clean scent of lemon floor polisher layered thick over it all, as though citrus can wipe out the taste of sadness.

He hears without listening, looks without seeing, and speaks without talking. Numbers and figures go flying across the room, black and white diagrams that Erwin only barely manages to understand are pictures of the inside of Levi's mind. He’s vaguely surprised to find there’s nothing about him there, vaguely surprised that all the wrinkles and dark spots etched onto the surface of Levi's brain don’t give a single clue to Erwin's existence at all. The doctor, white beard and even whiter coat, points to areas of the diagram where darkness has swallowed up the white, and Erwin is only vaguely aware of Levi nodding beside him, knuckles clenched to white on the knobby ridges of his knees.

“Advanced,” the doctor affirms. “Perhaps it can be contained with aggressive treatment, if we start right away.”

Ifs. Perhaps. The sun peeks out from behind a cloud, casting mottled greys across the neatly ordered blacks and whites of the world, and blurring the lines between right and wrong. From beside him, Erwin's all too aware that Levi's starting to sink. Humans always do, the weight of the water dragging them down until they find the way up again.

It isn’t until they’re already home that Levi speaks again, his mobile facedown on the coffee table, ignoring the messages and the calls that send vibrations through the glass with every passing half hour. “Will you…can you…do you think…you can make it better?” Levi asks, hopeful, looking up from under lowered lashes.

And, oh, it’s exactly the moment Erwin has been waiting for, waiting to draw out the shadows in Levi's mind and take it into his own, to compress it opium-black between his fingers and blow it away into the night like smoke.

“Of course I can,” he replies, magnanimously, confidently, rolling up the sleeves of his shirt. This, this he can do.

He leans forward, cradling Levi's head in his hands, fingers threading through silky dark hair. His thumbs press against the closed films of Levi's eyelids, lips chapped to Levi's soft, and with one, two, three gentle breaths and kisses that feel more like air and gossamer than anything else, draws the sickness out.

* * *

 

But the headaches stay, the quivers shake Levi to the bone, and the shadows grow thicker on the diagrams in the doctor’s office. Devastation, everything you touch you will destroy, clarion calls through the Scripture, because angels are not beautiful, and men are not immortal.

“We all have to go sometime,” Levi says, biting back bitter laughter as tufts of black hair litter their bathroom floor, soft silver gleam of the razor and milky pale gleam of his newly shorn scalp. Vulnerable.

“I’m sorry,” Erwin murmurs, his fingers shaking; the razor slips and nicks a cut to the pearl pink curve of Levi's right ear. Scarlet beads along the slash, and they both know he’s not talking about that.

“You can still be an angel,” Levi informs him one quiet October afternoon, when the crimson leaves are beading along the windowsill, and Petra's in the hospital cafeteria worrying her way through Styrofoam cups of cheap coffee. Poison drips into Levi's veins, so thick and venomous Erwin can almost taste it when they kiss, like anguish and despair and the overpowering acidity of lemon. “My angel of mercy.”

The shadows grow longer across the floor, the words caught in the back of Erwin's throat. He loves without knowing it, acceptance and bitter adoration in every nod. Yes. This, this he can do.

He fills the world with water, and like pebbles, they sink.

Levi's eyelids are filled with rivers of blue veins as he closes them for the last time. The monitor shrills its clarion call beside him, and he listens without hearing, because for the first time, the world has gone silent.


End file.
